PHOTOGRAPHY IN THE NORTH.
On a recent journey northwards, I was tempted to stop at York, take a look at the Exhibition there, and see if there were anything worth notice in the Photographic Department. That part of the Exhibition is exceedingly scanty, but the best Yorkshire photographers are well represented, both in landscape and portraiture. Among the contributors are the names of Sarony, Glaisby, Holroyd, Gowland, and other well-known names. Mr. Sarony exhibits a couple of frames containing several “new photo-crayons,” cartes-de-visite vignettes, which are very sketchy and effective, exhibiting those free and “dashy lines” and “hatchings” so characteristic of the “softening off” of artistic crayon drawings. This effect may be produced by a process of double printing, but it is more likely to have been obtained direct in the camera from a screen, having the edges of the aperture “softened off” with some free touches, the screen, in all probability, being placed between the lens and the sitter. Mr. Sarony also exhibits some large photographs very beautifully finished in colours. Messrs. Gowland exhibit, in a revolving case, a very unique collection of medallions and vignettes, both plain and coloured, mounted on tinted grounds, which give the pictures a very chaste and delicate appearance. The photographs themselves are exquisite bits of artistic pose and careful manipulation. They also exhibit a charming vignette of twenty-nine young ladies, all cleverly arranged, each figure sharp and distinct, and evidently recognisable portraits. This picture reminds one of Watteau, for the figures are in the woods, only, instead of semi-nude nymphs, the sitters are all properly and fashionably dressed young ladies. Messrs. Holroyd contribute some very excellent cartes-de-visite and enlargements. Mr. E. C. Walker, of Liverpool, exhibits some very beautiful opalotypes, or “photographs on enamelled glass.” Mr. Swan, Charing Cross, London, also sends specimens of his crystal cube portraits. Mr. A. H. Clarke, a deaf and dumb photographer, exhibits some very good groups of the Princess of Wales, Lady Wharncliffe, Lady Maud Lascelles, Countess Granville, and the Hon. Mrs. Hardinge, taken in the conservatory, when the Princess and suite were on a visit to Studley Royal, Yorkshire.
Amongst the landscape photographs are to be found some of Bedford’s finest views of Egypt and Jerusalem, Devonshire and Warwickshire, the beauties of which are so well-known to everyone interested in photography. Some of the local views by local artists are very fine; W. P. Glaisby’s views of York Minster are capital, especially the interiors. Messrs. Jackson Brothers, of Oldham, exhibit some very fine views, and show what atmospheric effects the camera is capable of rendering. That view of “Birstall Church” is a perfect master-piece of photo-aerial perspective. There are also a considerable number of photographic productions from the South Kensington Museum. Mr. Gregson, of Halifax, exhibits some excellent photographs of machinery. In apparatus there is nothing novel or striking, there being but one case of cameras, &c., exhibited by a London maker. There is a “water agitator” in the machinery “annexe,” for washing photographic prints, but the invention is more ingenious than effective, for the water is not agitated sufficiently, except in the immediate neighbourhood of the fan or “agitator,” which moves backwards and forwards in the water, in a manner somewhat similar to the motion of the pendulum of a clock, and so laves the water to and fro; but the force is not sufficient to prevent the prints from lying close together at the extremities of the trough, and imperfect washing is sure to be the result. The motion is given to the “agitator” by the water falling on a small wheel, something like “Williams’s revolving print washing machine.”
To describe the Exhibition itself: It is rather like a “compound mixture” of the church, the shop, and the show. The “Great Hall” is something like the nave of a wooden cathedral, with galleries running all round, and a grand organ at the end, peeling forth, at intervals, solemn strains of long measure. Over the organ, in white letters on a red ground, is the quotation, “He hath made all things beautiful in his time.”
The show cases on the floor of the Grand Hall are arranged as indiscriminately as the shops in Oxford Street. In one case there are exhibited samples of Colman’s mustard, in that next to it samples of “Elkington and Co.’s plated goods,” and in another close by are samples of saddlery, which give the place more the business aspect of a bazaar than the desirable and advantageous classification of an exhibition. Then you are reminded of the show by the frequent ringing of a loud bell, and cries of “This way to the fairy fountain, just going to begin, only twopence.” Such things jar on the ears and nerves of quiet visitors, and are only expected in such a place as the Polytechnic in London.
The great features of the York Exhibition are the picture galleries; and here a better order of things prevails. The collections are classified; one gallery, or part of it, being devoted to the works of the old masters, another to the modern, and another to the water-colours. Among the old masters are some fine portraits by Velasquez, Tintoretto, Rembrandt, Vandyke, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Gainsborough, Sir Peter Lely, and others. And some of those grand old landscapes by Salvator Rosa, Rubens, Claude, Wilson, the English Claude, and George Morland, such pictures as are rarely seen out of private collections. The modern masters are abundantly represented by Wilkie, Etty, Frith, Westall, Faed, Cope, E. Nicol, Stanfield, Linnell, and a host of others. Amongst the water-colours are many fine examples of the works of Turner, the Richardsons (father and sons), Birket Foster, &c., &c.
Sculpture is very faintly represented, but there is a charming little Canova, Dirce, exhibited by Lord Wenlock; an antique bust of Julius Cæsar, which seems to have been found in fragments and carefully joined together. This bust is exhibited by the Hon. P. Downay, and was found in Rome amongst some rubbish, while some excavations were being made. There is also an interesting series of marble busts of the Twelve Cæsars, exhibited by Lord Londesborough. The Exhibition is open in the evening, and brilliantly lighted with gas till ten o‘clock; and, taking it “all in all,” it is a very creditable effort in the right direction, and does honour to York and Yorkshiremen.
Further north still, at Newcastle-on-Tyne, there is another exhibition of “Arts and Manufactures,” the chief photographic feature of which is a considerable display of “Swan’s Carbon Prints,” from several well-known negatives by Bedford and Robinson. The promise of this process is very great, and its commercial advantages were singularly demonstrated to me when visiting the printing establishment of Mr. Swan, which I happened to do on a dark and unfavourable day—one totally unfit for silver printing; and yet I saw several very beautiful carbon prints that had been produced that day, the rate of production being about eight to one over silver printing. As a proof of the certainty and commercial application to which Mr. Swan has reduced his beautiful process, I need only mention that he has undertaken the printing of two thousand copies of the celebrated picture of “The First General Assembly of the Church of Scotland,” painted by D. O. Hill. This historical picture contains four hundred and fifty portraits: the negatives were taken from the original painting by Mr. Annan, photographer, Glasgow, and are 32 by 14 inches, and 24 by 9 inches; and Mr. Swan has to turn off one thousand copies of each within a given time. The publishers of the work give a guarantee to their subscribers that every print shall be of a high standard, for each one has to pass the examination of two competent judges. They also very justly pride themselves on being the very first to translate and multiply such noble works of art by a process “so beautiful, and, at the same time, imperishable.” I saw several of the prints, both in process of development and complete; and anything more like rich, soft, and brilliant impressions of a fine mezzotint engraving I never saw, by any process of photography.
Mr. Swan’s arrangements for conducting the various parts of his process are very extensive and complete; and his mode of “developing and transferring” seems to be the very acme of perfection. But, as Mr. Swan is about to publish a work containing a full description of the process, with a beautiful specimen print as frontispiece, I will not anticipate him, or mar his own comprehensive account of the details of a process which he has brought to such a state of beauty and perfection, by an amount of patient perseverance and thoughtful application rarely exhibited or possessed by one individual.
I also visited the photographic establishment of Messrs. Downey in Newcastle, and there saw some cabinet pictures of the Princess of Wales, taken recently at Abergeldie Castle. Messrs. Downey have just returned from Balmoral with upwards of two hundred negatives, including whole-plate, half-plate, and cabinet size, which will be published in one or all those sizes, as soon as the orders of Her Majesty have been executed. From the well-known reputation of the Messrs. Downey as photographers, it is, in all probability, a treat in store for the lovers of photography, to get a sight of their latest works at Balmoral and Abergeldie.
Mr. Parry, another excellent photographer in Newcastle, was also making arrangements to introduce the new cabinet size picture in a style that will insure its success.
Altogether, the movements of the best photographers in the North are highly commendable, and, with their notoriously practical minds, there is little doubt of their undertakings becoming a success. Let us hope that the same elements of energy and “push” will speedily impregnate the minds of all photographers, and create a combination that will develop a new form of popular beauty, and result in forming a salt that will savour their labours, produce deposits of gold, and create innumerable orders of merit.